BEHOLD THE MIGHTY STEVE BANNON AS HE EMERGES IN A GLORIOUS CLOUD OF CHEETO-DUST CLAD IN HIS BATH-TOWEL “LOINCLOTH” AND NECKTIE HEADBAND AS HE WIELDS THE MIGHTY SHIELD OF GARBAGE-CAN-LIDDIA AND THE GIANT CLUB OF SALAMI-TRON!

MARVEL AS HE RIDES HIS MIGHTY GREEN STEED, “JOHN-DEERIEA” SHOUTING HIS CONFEDERATE WAR-CRY AS A MAJESTIC SWELL OF “ENTRY OF THE GLADIATORS” IS PERFORMED BY THE 100-STRONG JOSEPH PUJOL BUTT-ORCHESTRA!
Imagine this tune as farts….

Oscar is a funny cat. It’s not that he’s unfriendly as such; he’s actually very pleasant company in that “let’s just both sit here and do our own thing” way. It’s just that in every interaction with humans it’s like he “deigns“. So he’ll do the string thing, but he very much likes to give the impression that he’s willing to give up five minutes of his time for *your* benefit.

Oscar looks very cool, but I am v. v. suspicious that you are trying to pull the wool with this “music biz” handwaving, Alan. I thought fiends were in the tempting/stealing souls/general demonic stuff biz. Are they perhaps specialists, working in the DevilHasAllTheBestTunes Department?
I am not the first to note that you did say fiends u kno …

@Alan Robertshaw: Aaaaawwwww, a cyclops kitty! My brothers in-laws ex-wife used to volunteer at a cat rescue. So many of the rescued cats were blind in one eye, due to disease. Their eyes were all filmed over. It was heartbreaking.

@Kupo: A spider in your ear. I would have been frantic. Occasionally, I find deer ticks on my scalp. The first time it happened, I went ballistic. Now, I make a point of checking my scalp after a walk in the woods.

@Dreemr: I read The Fountainhead when I was 12 or 13. I agree with you – it’s an entertaining story, but a lame philosophy. One of Rand’s books was more than enough for me.

No wait, don’t overuse it too much too quickly or you’ll burn it out! Give it a few days, THEN put up another round. I recommend Steve Miller to finish the purge of the most odious alt-righters in the White House that can actually plan.

@misophistry
I was too afraid there was still something in there to put any in last night. I didn’t want to trap something in! But I might try that tonight. Or if I can’t find any laying around, I have earbuds that do a good job of sealing the opening.

That is a really fun series, though I haven’t read their most recent adventures. Nor do I know if their creator, Batton Lash, is a good guy or an ass (hopefully not).

The strip got its start in (I think) the 1980’s (ETA: 1979), and was originally published in (I think) The National Law Review. Later those strips were republished in The Comics Buyers Guide in the 1990’s (where I first found them). Later Lash did them as a self-published comic under the Exhibit A press (Mavis the Secretary also got her own series under that imprint).

At some point the W&B series was renamed Supernatural Law, and is evidently now a web comic, evidently here:

Good news:
While on was normal (an article about Trump that focuses on Bannon also) the other article was embarasing.
Breitbart UK manage to illustrate an article about illegal immigrants using watersky to get to spain, with a picture about someone waterskying.
The problem: The person was someone pretty famous and the picture was probably taken during the SocerWM in Brazil.
So Breitbart managed to become a laughting stock.

I still remember the mini-comic done for one Amazing Heroes ‘Swimsuit Issue’.

First panel: Monster crawling up on beach near fleeing people, accompanied by overwrought narration about ‘The horror from the deep. What does it want?’

Second panel: Wolff and Byrd walking down the beach towards the scene. Narration going on about ‘Who are these lawyers that approach so fearlessly? Why do they feel unworried about attack? Could it be…’ (Narration gets cut off by scream)

Third panel: Alanna Wolff glaring at some of the other beachgoers, while Jeff Byrd asides to the monster, “Sorry about that, but my partner always said she’d scream the next time someone cracked that old chestnut about ‘professional courtesy’.” Followed by the monster responding, “Oh, don’t worry, I know exactly what you mean.”

Given how much of the (admittedly often dark) humour was built on the fact that the supernatural creatures were in many cases quite ‘human’ and while not necessarily the good guys, still people in need of some proper help… I’d be surprised if Batton Lash were too much of an ass. You need to be able to empathize to do humour like that.

(There was one story where a judge who had a reputation as a stickler for the letter of the law died in his chambers while rewriting his will to try to make it airtight and immune to any challenges. His ghost was running a lot of the paralegals ragged bringing up various case files as he kept trying to do this even after he died. Eventually he was laid to rest after Wolff and Byrd brought in case law indicating that posthumous changes to a will were invalid, even if the changes had previously been requested by the person involved. By his own rules, he had nothing more to do, and so he left.)

Sympathy, Kupo, I’m really arachnophobic so that would have freaked me out too. Could shifting sleeping position for a while, or otherwise doing something differently, to remove the association, help you feel better?

@dreemr
Just, argh and *whimper* at that description of Mercer’s thinking. I never understand how these libertarian dudes manage to maintain their views. Even if you accept their messed-up premises just for the sake of argument, it still doesn’t hold up. Even by his own ‘logic’, he says a cat has value because they give people pleasure, so, emotional value counts. So can he not even, at absolute bare minimum (which would still not result in actual human decency), see people on welfare as having value for the same reason, to their families, friends, and so on? Some of whom might even be net contributing taxpayers!

Wealthy rentiers especially, certainly, yeah. It can be a fair bit of maintenance work (and emotional labour, too, making sure tenants are Ok) if you have to do more stuff yourself. My working class grandad used to rent out rooms in their house, which is most of the reason I currently have anywhere to live, since my parents used the inheritance to buy my little flat to adapt for my disability and rent to me. Which I feel extremely fortunate for, of course, the social mobility my family did have and the safety net it provided when the state should’ve but didn’t. I imagine that kind of arrangement would be incomprehensible to Randites because who cares about family?

I think part of the reason Libertarians get away with it is they do a bit of a bait-and-switch between people who at least are doing more work and what’s involved in that, and wealthy capitalists who started out that way to begin with, and just rely on capital to make more.

Barriers to work and the relation to welfare is another blindspot of theirs. Or rather, another example of their callousness. I’ve tried going over the disability rights ideas with them, but nope, us disabled people can never ever win. They’re not interested in us getting off benefits, really. If we can’t work, either:
1. Our families should support us. Too bad if we don’t have one, or they can’t, or won’t. Our families paying tax doesn’t count, us paying tax (council, VAT) doesn’t count. Only super-objective Libertarian dude’s tax (aka us stealing his monies) counts.
2. Charity should support us. But charity is a Very Bad Thing. It also doesn’t matter if it’s inadequate.
3. (Preferred option) Well, we SHOULD work and are just lazy scroungers. You tried and no one would employ you (because discrimination)? Well, it’s your fault for being disabled (I’ve seen them go so far as to suggest employing disabled people would put customers off), and you can’t expect employers to make accommodations. You should accept being paid less because you’re disabled and automatically worth less. It doesn’t matter if you can’t actually live on less. It doesn’t matter if you’re perfectly competent at the job, for instance because the only actual barrier is you can’t physically get around in the work environment. If you suggest a different way of doing things, this will not count as the grand ideal of Libertarian innovation (even if it would make it easier for other employees, too, and might increase efficiency -disabled people have a lot of practice at working out alternative ways to do stuff!-), but as unreasonable crip accommodation. This goes extra if your suggested change might render Libertarian dude of less obvious ‘value’ (hmm, maybe ‘economic value’ is a shitty way to measure people?).
4. (extra-preferred option) Just die and decrease the surplus population.

And of course, that’s not even including the impact of lack of access to healthcare on being on benefits. >_<

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.